Cross-posted from the ActBlue Blog.

There is a rising force in the online community, often forgotten by the mainstream media because of their niche audience and dispersed nature. With over half a million readers a week they are on the front lines of grassroots battles. Their ears to the ground and their footsteps echoing in the halls of their capitals, they are often the first to report on issues and breaking news that eventually bubble up to the national discussion.

This force is the vast and ever growing community of state and local blogs, both those in the 50-state blog network and beyond. These blogs and their nearly 1000 authors are both a part of the national Netroots and unique local communities unto themselves. 

In some states with more established blogging traditions, networks of bloggers have created communications tools to facilitate the sharing of best practices and to coordinate messaging campaigns. Other blog networks have worked to grow readership and develop true community-oriented sites. This year has seen some of the most interesting developments as these blogging communities started flexing their fundraising muscle in state and local races. Even better, some have gone a step further by leveraging their online presence into offline action. This maturation of state blogging is truly exciting.

I've gotten in touch with some of the organizers of this new breed of activism in hopes that by sharing their experiences, we might inspire others to similarly innovative action.

When I'm explaining ActBlue to people who don't spend much personal or professional time on politics, I usually start with something like "Most PACs operate by endorsing candidates who are strong on their issues and raising money for them.  But we're not like most PACs."

At ActBlue we pride ourselves on being an honest broker in the Democratic movement. Concretely, that means that every Democrat running for President, House, Senate, and state executive and legislative races around the country that's registered with the appropriate election office is listed in our candidate directory (or at least they should be -- if you notice someone missing just let us know) and we provide them all with access to exactly the same software and services.

And we're particularly proud that campaigns trust our neutrality: in primaries including the recent MA-05 special election and the upcoming ME-01 and CA Senate District 3 races, all (or almost all) of the Democratic campaigns are using ActBlue as a core part of their online fundraising program.

But for an organization with an inherently political mission, it's an odd route to take.  So why'd we do it?

When Matt DeBergalis and I founded ActBlue in 2004, this course was a straightforward choice for several reasons:

1. Republicans controlled every branch of government and were on an unchecked tear to remake this country in their own horrifying ultra-conservative vision: a disastrous war abroad, erosion of civil rights at home, and a government run for the benefit of corporate greed -- social and environmental consequences be damned.  We needed to push back--hard--by returning the Democratic Party to power.
2. The organizations, bloggers, and grassroots activists we wanted to serve were all making different choices about who to support.  With different issue priorities, different strategies, and different opinions about which campaigns were most likely to put Democrats over the top, the best way to help them all was to build a platform that could support all of the candidates for whom they wanted to fundraise.
3. It didn't hurt that this route was easy to implement. We could focus our efforts on building a novel fundraising platform rather than detailed candidate research.

Of course we got a good bit of flack for this choice in various corners: "Why are you supporting [candidate X]? They're way too conservative/crazy/long-shot to deserve help from ActBlue."  One of my off-hand responses from 2004 lives on in our Frequently Asked Questions:

You listed a candidate who clubs baby seals-shouldn't you take them off the site?

We...don't impose our personal or ideological judgments on our decisions to include or exclude anyone. However, if our users share our anti-baby-seal-clubbing views, no one will promote them on their fundraising pages, and there won't be any problem. 

In that quip, though, lies a more fundamental reason for our approach that we didn't fully appreciate when we got started. By offering a trusted, neutral platform for all Democratic candidates and fundraisers, we're creating a more democratic (little 'd') party -- and that ultimately makes the movement stronger.

Let me unpack that a bit.

I just got this statement in on Senate Majority Harry Reid's support of the 4th Annual Blogosphere Day!

I am immensely proud that 17 of my Senate colleagues have joined me in using ActBlue to build our Democratic majority, and I expect many more to do so this election cycle.

Blogosphere Day celebrates the greatest aspiration of our democracy: people coming together to change the direction of their country.  By enabling Democrats from all walks of life to work together, to pool their passion and energy, and to elect candidates who represent their values, ActBlue has created a unique strategic advantage for the Democratic Party.

Your investment in ActBlue builds resources for our best candidates, our best activists, and our best ideas -- and your contribution today makes the biggest difference as we pave the road to November 2008.

Please support ActBlue today.

For more background on to the value of ActBlue check out the linked articles or today's round-up of activity.

Update: Sen. John Kerry is blogging at Firedoglake about Blogosphere Day!

Over the past week we've looked at a number of statistics from ActBlue.com, everything from some raw numbers, top candidates, and top fundraising pages. To finish out our series we're going to take a look at one of the most important areas of ActBlue- state level fundraising.

It's true that federal activity made up the majority of 2nd Quarter fundraising at ActBlue- 90% in fact. That's no surprise as federal races have always made up the bulk of ActBlue activity and tend to get started sooner than state legislative races.

That said, state level fundraising at ActBlue has huge potential for 2008 and is already showing enormous growth. In the 2nd Quarter, $323,638 was raised for state candidates in 15 states. (To note- in Q2 2005, just under $100,000 was raised across ActBlue for all candidates federal and non-federal.)

The charts below break out the numbers by state and detail the cluster of activity in Virginia (which has 2007 elections) and California.

In addition, the following table is of the Top 10 state candidates by $ raised on ActBlue in the 2nd Quarter.

We're looking forward to helping more candidates in the 23 states where we are active. If you are a campaign in the following states, (Alabama, Arizona, California, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming) contact us at info@actblue.com to get set up with ActBlue and start fundraising today!

That concludes our Q2 Stats Week with ActBlue. If seeing more if this type of data is something you find valuable on an ongoing basis, leave a note and we'll see about developing a more automated system to present select data.

Yesterday we looked at the top candidates on ActBlue for the last quarter. Today we'll look at our ActBlue fundraising pages which any individual or campaign can create to support the candidates and causes of their choice.

Before we look at the individual pages here are some big picture numbers. Since ActBlue started three years ago, 4,263 different fundraising pages have been created, 43% of which have raised funds. In the 2nd Quarter of 2007, 606 fundraising pages were created, of which 71% raised funds. We're very excited to see that above average number of successful pages. Users are becoming more savvy in reaching out to their friends and supporters which is beneficial to the campaigns receiving those contributions.

And now, the Top 10 lists of ActBlue fundraising pages by number of donors and dollars broken down by lifetime totals and those for the recently completed Q2.

Top 10 fundraising pages by # donors (Lifetime)

count   | page name
---------+---------------------
40,026 | johnedwards
14,443 | netrootscandidates
  8,994 | hackett
  6,151 | blueamerica
  5,521 | pacforachange
  3,555 | eschaton
  3,421 | takebackthecongress
  2,752 | dnc
  2,450 | republicanfirewall
  2,235 | dkos

Top 10 fundraising pages by # of donors (Q2)

   count | page name
  -------+----------------------
12,661 | johnedwards
   1,017 | roadblockrepublicans
      842 | kerryforjohnson
      482 | blueamerica08
      373 | thepen
      346 | bluemajority
      318 | fightback
      310 | recount
      284 | infrastructure
      199 | eric

Top 10 fundraising pages by $ (Lifetime)

$ amount  |  page name
------------+--------------------
3,397,145 | johnedwards
1,601,968 | netrootscandidates
   568,009 | blueamerica
   532,998 | dansealsforcongress.com
   482,616 | hackett
   377,058 | dkos
   325,313 | sos-all
   292,829 | pacforachange
   278,821 | christine
   257,327 | republicanfirewall

Yesterday we looked at some of the big picture numbers at ActBlue. Today, we're going to take a look at candidates and campaigns behind those numbers, both for the 2nd Quarter and for ActBlue's history.

Top 10 entities by # donors (Lifetime)

count   |   candidate
---------+------------------
41,236 | John Edwards
16,363 | James Webb
12,420 | Ned Lamont
11,090 | Claire McCaskill
10,709 | Jon Tester
10,627 | Paul Hackett
  9,300 | Joseph Sestak Jr
  7,378 | Harold Ford, Jr
  7,187 | Eric Massa
  6,584 | Darcy Burner

Top 10 entities by # donors (Q2)

count   |   candidate
---------+------------------
13,028 | John Edwards
  1,725 | Tim Johnson
     859 | Charlie Brown
     852 | KY-Sen Democratic Nominee Fund 2008
     830 | MN-Sen Democratic Nominee Fund 2008
     763 | NH-Sen Democratic Nominee Fund 2008
     755 | ME-Sen Democratic Nominee Fund 2008
     664 | Keeping America's Promise
     591 | Tom Allen
     548 | BlogPAC

Top candidates by $ raised (Lifetime)

amount     |  candidate
-------------+------------------
3,437,887 | John Edwards
   894,042 | James Webb
   868,287 | Joseph Sestak Jr
   538,659 | Dan Seals
   528,664 | Paul Hackett
   507,553 | Tim Mahoney
   453,027 | Ned Lamont
   415,751 | Eric Massa
   395,795 | John Morrison

Top candidates by $ raised (Q2)

amount  |  candidate
----------+------------------
883,656 | John Edwards
134,904 | John Kerry
128,215 | Jared Polis
107,483 | Joseph Sestak Jr
103,264 | Tim Johnson
101,689 | Steve Novick
  97,000 | Chellie Pingree
  77,677 | Niki Tsongas
  74,254 | Mark Leno
  70,377 | Jamie Eldridge

Join us tomorrow when we look at fundraising pages on ActBlue.

Let's spend some time looking at our ActBlue totals, donors, and contributions. I'll be breaking these apart for 2nd Quarter data compared to that for the lifetime of ActBlue.

Total Contributions
Life:   $24,790,988.32
Q2:      $3,460,609.75

The 2nd Quarter of 2007 represents 14% of all contributions made on ActBlue over the least 3 years. To put this in perspective, it took ActBlue over five fundraising quarters in '05-'06 to raise the same amount as was raised in this past quarter alone. By November of 2006, ActBlue had raised a lifetime total of about $17 million with 40% of that coming in during the last 6 weeks of the campaign cycle. When you consider that Q2 2007 is already outpacing Q2 2005 by a factor of 10 and that this is a Presidential Cycle...well, you get the picture. It's one of the reasons why investment in ActBlue is so critical- we'll need to expand our six member staff and move out of our 600 sq ft office sooner than later.

Total Number of donors
Life: 217,998
Q2:     28,925

The 2nd Quarter of 2007 represents 13.2% of the number of individual donors on ActBlue.

Average contribution size to all entities
Life:  $60.38
Q2:    $99.65

The 2nd Quarter of 2007 represents a 65% increase in the average contribution size to all candidates, committees, and organizations when compared to the ActBlue lifetime average. This is explained by the activity of campaigns. Monies raised earlier in an election cycle tend to be weighted more heavily by maxed out or large donors. In campaigns, these larger donations are often gathered to generate early momentum and viability as candidates reach out to their personal friends and most steadfast supporters. As individual fundraisers and grassroots communities grow we expect this average contribution size to naturally fall later in the cycle.

Average contribution size made to ActBlue Pages
Life:  $112.28
Q2:    $119.64

The 2nd Quarter of 2007 represents only a 6.5% increase in the average contribution size made to ActBlue fundraising pages. Overall, contributions to pages are higher than those to entities since pages often contain multiple candidates. The slight increase is within the normal parameters, although the use by some campaigns of single, one-candidates ActBlue pages to collect contributions for their sites has some effect in increasing the average. Compared to the rather large increase in average contributions to "entities" explained above, we can see that pages are less effected by the campaign cycle since they are more grassroots in nature.

Median contribution
Life: $50.00
Q2:   $45.00

The 2nd Quarter of 2007 represents a 10% decline in the median contribution size. While the average contribution size has increased, the decline in the median contribution is evidence that small dollar grassroots contributions are healthy and abundant on ActBlue. This means a cluster of high dollar donations is responsible for bringing up the site's average for the quarter rather than a more general trend of larger contribution sizes.

Join us again tomorrow when we explore the topic of top candidates on the ActBlue Blog.

We've talked a lot about how you can use ActBlue effectively, where you can run into us at trainings and events, and what's coming next.  Today's topic is a little different, but no less important.

I want to start talking about how it all works.  In particular, I want to talk about sustainability: how we built ActBlue to last forever.

Some quick history to start.  Ben and I launched ActBlue in June 2004 and shepherded just shy of $1 million to 150 Democrats that year -- a success in its own right.  We always treated 2004 as a two-front experiment, though: one, will the ActBlue model for funding candidates work (yes!); and two, can we build the organization itself in a sustainable fashion.

Raising funds for infrastructure like ActBlue instead of campaigns is always a challenge.  Some of the best advice Ben and I got in the early going was to create a sustainable organization -- one whose operations provide all the necessary internal funding.  (Companies that aren't sustainable go bankrupt and are considered failures or Internet startups, and yet this is all too common in the political world.)  Our answer was the tip request that we ask of each contributor using the website.  What excited us about 2004 is that over half our donors left a tip for ActBlue.  We thought we were on to something.

There was only one problem.  We were still broke.

* * *